3.1.A. Peer production as a third mode of production
There are two important aspects to the emergence of P2P in the
economic sphere. On the one hand, as format for peer production
processes (called ‘Commons-based peer production' or CBPP by Y. Benckler
) it is emerging as a 'third mode of production' based on the
cooperation of autonomous agents. Indeed, if the first mode of
production is free-market based capitalism, and the second mode was the
now defunct model of a centrally-planned state-owned economy, then the
third mode is defined neither by the motor of profit, nor by any central
planning. In order to allocate resources and make decisions, it is
neither using market and pricing mechanisms, nor managerial commands,
but social relations.

The second aspect, as the juridical underpinning of software creation,
in the form of the General Public License, or as the Creative Commons
license for other creative content, it is engendering a new
commons-based intellectual property regime. Taken together the GPL, the
Open Source Initiative and the Creative Commons, together with
associated initiatives such as the Art Libre license, may be seen as
providing the 'legal' infrastructure for the emergence and growth of the
P2P social formation. Peer production proper covers the first aspect:
freely cooperating producers, governing themselves through peer
governance, and producing a new type of universal common goods. The
second aspect, mostly as free software and open sources, is the result
of that process, but not necessarily. It is possible that corporations
would produce free software (accessible and modifiable for free), in a
more traditional way, or in a hybrid way, now that many large
corporations are embracing open sources, this is increasingly the case.
But what is important for us is the following: worldwide, groups
of programmers and other experts are engaging in the cooperative
production of immaterial goods with important use value, mostly new
software systems, but not exclusively. And as we will see later, peer
production is much broader than software, it emerges thoughout the
social field. The new software, hardware and other immaterial products
thus being created are at the same time new means of production, since
the computer is now a universal machine ‘in charge of everything’ (every
productive action that can be broken down in logical steps can be
directed by a computer). Access to computer technology is distributed,
and thus widely affordable given a minimum of financial means, and
technological literacy. This means that the old dichotomy, between
workers and the means of production, is in the process of being overcome
for certain areas of fixed capital, and that the emergence of the viral
communicator model, technological meshworks, is extending this model of
distributed access to fixed capital assets, to more and more areas.
Important to note is that software is 'active text' which directly
results in 'processes'. In other words, software is not just an
immaterial pursuit, but can actively direct material and industrial
processes. As a cooperation format, we will discuss it in more detail in
the section 'Advantages of the peer production model'. Peer governance
models will also be discussed elsewhere.
A further important aspect of peer production is the creation of
universal public goods, i.e. the emergence of new common property
regimes. As creation of a new type of commons, it takes the form of
either the Free Software Movement ethos , as defined by Richard
Stallman (Stallman, 2002 ), or in the form of Open Source projects, as
first defined by Eric Raymond (Raymond, 2001). Both are innovative
developments of copyright that significantly transcend the implications
of privaty property and its restrictions. However, the ethos underlying
both initiatives is different, While the Free Software Foundation
insists that its production is not for exchange on the market, and not
to be converted into private property, the Open Source Iniative aims to
be compatible with the market and business thinking and stresses the
efficiency argument which results from a public domain of software.
Free software is essentially 'open code'. Its General Public
Licence says that anyone using free software must give subsequent users
at least the same rights as they themselves received: total freedom to
see the code, to change it, to improve it and to distribute it . There
is some discussion as to whether Free Software must be 'free', in the
sense of free beer . While its spokesmen, including Richard Stallman,
clearly say that it is okay to charge for such software, the obligation
of free distribution makes this a rather moot argument. The companies
that sell software, such as Red Hat, which sells version of Linux, could
be said to charge for the services attached to its installation and
use, rather than for the freely distributable software itself. This is
an important argument for those stressing, as I do, the essential
non-mercantile nature of free software. But in any case, if in a
for-profit enterprise software is developed so that it can be sold as a
product, in the case of free software, if it is sold by non-commercial
entities or the programmers themselves, it is most often as a means of
producing more software, to strengthen the community and obtain
financial independence to continue further projects.
FS explicitely rejects the ownership of software, since every
user has the right to distribute the code, and to adapt it and is thus
explicitely founded on a philosophy of participation and 'sharing'. Open
Sources is admittedly less radical: it accepts ownership of software,
but renders that ownership feeble since users and other developers have
full right to use and change it . But since the OS model has been
specifically designed to soften its acceptance by the business community
which is now increasingly involved in its development , it generally
leads to a lot more control of the labor process, including the use of
traditional corporate processes. OS licenses allow segments of code to
be used in proprietary and commercial projects, something impossible
with pure free software. But even free software projects have become
increasingly professionalised , and it now generally consists of a core
of often paid professionals, funded by either nonprofits or by
corporations having an interest in its continued expansion; they also
use professional project management systems, as is the case for Linux.
Despite their differences or essential likeness – a matter of continuous
debate in both FS and OS communities -- I will use both concepts more
for their underlying similarity, without my use denoting a preference,
but on a personal level would be probably closer to the free software
model, which is the 'purer' form of commons-based peer production.
Despite it rootedness as a modification of intellectual property
rights, both do have the effect of creating a kind of public domain in
software, and can be considered as part of the information commons .
However, the GPL does that by completely preserving the authorship of
its creators. Free software and open sources are exemplary of the double
nature of peer to peer that we will discuss later: it is both within
the system, but partly transcends it. Though it is increasingly
attractive to economic forces for its efficiency, the profit motive is
not the core of why these systems are taken up, it is much more about
the use value of the products. You could say that they are part of a new
'for-benefit' sector, which also includes the NGO's, social
entrepreneurs and what the Europeans call 'the social economy', and that
is arising next to the 'for-profit' economy of private corporations.
Studies show that the personal development of participants are primary
motives, despite the fact that quite a few programmers are now paid for
their efforts . Whatever the motives though, in a sense 'it doesn't
matter' since in the open and global environment create by the internet,
there is always a sufficient number of people willing to cooperate on
any given project. Open Sources explicitely promotes itself through its
value to create more efficient software in the business environment. It
is even being embraced by corporate interests such as IBM and other
Microsoft rivals, as a way to bypass the latter's monopoly, but the
creation of an open infrastructure is clearly crucial and in everyone’s
interest. But through the generalization of a cooperative mode of
working , and through its overturning of the limits of property, which
normally forbids other developers and users to study and ameliorate the
source code, it is beyond the property model, contrary to the
authoritarian, bureaucratic, or 'feudal' modes of corporate governance;
and beyond the profit motive. We should also note that we have here the
emergence of a mode of production that can be entirely devoid of a
manufacturer . In the words of Doc Searls, senior editor of Linux
magazine, we see the demand-side supplying itself .
In conclusion:
Seen from the point of view of capitalism or private for-profit
interests, commons-based peer production has the following advantages :
1) it represents more productive ways of working and of mobilizing
external communities to its own purposes ; 2) it represents a means of
externalizing costs or of lowering transaction costs ; 3) it represents
new types of business models based on 'customer-made production', such
as eBay and Amazon; 4) it represents new service-based business models,
where by free software is used as the basis of providing surrounding
services (Red Hat); 5) it represents a common shared infrastructure
whose costs and building is taken up largely by the community and which
prohibits both monopolistic control by stronger rivals as well as
providing common standards so that a market can develop around it. In
all these senses FS/OS forms of peer production are 'within the system'.
We should also stress the dependence of the peer production
community to the existing system. Since producers are not paid for their
services, they have to work within the mainstream economy: for the
government or academia, for traditional corporations, running their own
individual or small business, or moving from project to project. Thus,
despite its growth, peer production is still relatively weak. Though it
outcompetes its for-profit rivals in efficiency, though it increases the
welfare of its producers, though it creates important use value, it
only covers part of the economy, mostly immaterial processes, while the
mainstream, capitalist economy, functions as a full system. In this
sense, peer to peer is immanent in the system, and productive of
capitalism itself, as we have shown in the first chapter. But it is also
more than that, a transcendent element that goes beyond the larger
system of which it is a part. It is a germ of something new: it still
goes 'beyond' the existing system.
To summarise the importance of the 'transcending' factors of
Commons-based peer production: 1) it is based on free cooperation, not
on the selling of one's labour in exchange of a wage, nor motivated
primarily by profit or for the exchange value of the resulting product;
2) it not managed by a traditional hierarchy, but through new modes of
peer governance; 3) it does not need a manufacturer; 4) it's an
innovative application of copyright which creates an information commons
and transcends the limitations attached to both the private
(for-profit) and public (state-based) property forms. It creates a new
type of universal common property.
How widespread are these developments? Open-source based
computers are already the mainstay of the internet’s infrastructure
(Apache servers); Linux is an alternative operating system that is
taking the world by storm . It is now a practical possibility to
operating system that is taking the world by storm . It is now a
practical possibility to create an Open Source personal computer that
exclusively uses OS software products for the desktop, including
database, accounting, graphical programs, including browsers such as
Firefox . It is recognized as its main threat by the current operating
system monopoly Microsoft . As a collaborative method to produce
software, it is being used increasingly by various businesses and
institutions . Wikipedia is an alternative encyclopedia produced by the
internet community which is rapidly gaining in quantity, quality, and
number of users. And there are several thousands of such projects,
involving at least several millions of cooperating individuals. If we
consider blogging as a form of journalistic production, then it must be
noted that it already involves between 5 and 10 million bloggers, with
the most popular ones achieving several hundred thousands of visitors.
We are pretty much in an era of ‘open source everything’, with musicians
and other artists using it as well for collaborative online
productions. In general it can be said that this mode of production
achieves ‘products’ that are at least as good, and often better than
their commercial counterparts. In addition, there are solid reasons to
accept that, if the open source methodology is consistently used over
time, the end result can only be better alternatives, since they
involved mobilization of vastly most resources than commercial products.
Open source production operates in a wider economic context, of
which we would like to describe ‘the communism of capital’, with ‘the
hacker ethic’ functioning as the basis of it’s new work culture.
Figure – Choosing for a Open Source Desktop: NOT AVAILABLE IN WIKI VERSION

About Me

Robert Searle was educated in Windsor at the Royal Free, the Tutorials, and East Berkshire College. He is the originator of two major "work in progress" Paradigms known as Transfinancial Economics (TFE), and Multi-Dimensional Science (MDS).The former believes that new unearned money could be electronically created without serious inflation notably for key environmental, and
socially ethical projects. Multi-Dimensional Science though presents an unique "scientific" Methodology by which claimed psychic, and spiritual "phenomena"could possibly be "proved".
Apart from the above, Searle has proposed the development of the Universal Debating Project, an interactive "encyclopedia" of virtually "all" pro, and con arguments for practically any subject in the world.He is the creator too of a tribute blog on the musician, and broadcaster David Munrow (1942-1976), and a pioneering one on Contemporary Early Music.Furthermore, he has a very large audio-visual collection of Medieval, and Renaissance Music (manually created as Searle8), and has an "unusual" musical project involving improvisation which could also open up a "new" approach to music.